Elizabeth Bennet is young, vivacious, strong-willed, and unmarried. Mr. Darcy is rich, handsome, unbearably arrogant, and also unmarried. The two are reluctantly attracted to one another. Yet they each fight against the love they feel with fierce pride and willful prejudice.

Marlow, the story's narrator, tells his friends of an experience in the British Congo where he once ran a river steamer for a trading company. He tells of the ivory traders' cruel exploitation of the natives there. Chief among these is a greedy and treacherous European named Kurtz, a man who has used savagery to obtain semi-divine power over the natives. While Marlow tries to get Kurtz back down the river, Kurtz tries to justify his actions and motions,...